Fire Alarm Control Panel

Advanced, Intelligent and Addressable.

A Fire Alarm Control Panel (FACP), or Fire Alarm Control Unit (FACU), is the controlling component of a Fire Alarm System. The panel receives information from environmental sensors designed to detect changes associated with fire, monitors their operational integrity and provides for automatic control of equipment, and transmission of information necessary to prepare the facility for fire based on a predetermined sequence. The panel may also supply electrical energy to operate any associated sensor, control, transmitter, or relay.

Addressable panels are usually more advanced than their conventional counterparts, with greater information capacity and control flexibility.

Addressable Fire Alarm Control Panel employ one or more Signaling Line Circuits – usually referred to as loops or SLC loops – ranging between one and thirty. Depending on the protocol used, a Signaling Line Circuit can monitor and control several hundred devices. Some protocols permit any mix of detectors and input/output modules, while other protocols have 50% of channel capacity restricted to detectors/sensors and 50% restricted to input/output modules. Each SLC polls the devices connected, which can number from a few devices to several hundred, depending on the manufacturer. Large systems may have multiple Signaling Line Circuits.